where is the sahara desert located?
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where is the sahara desert located?
Blanketing much of the northern third of the African continent, or some 3.5 million square miles, the Sahara Desert, the largest desert in the world, extends eastward from the Atlantic Ocean some 3,000 miles to the Nile River and the Red Sea, and southward from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and the Mediterranean shores more than 1,000 miles to the savannah called the Sahel. More than 16 times the size of France, the Sahara Desert blankets nearly all of Mauritania, Western Sahara, Algeria, Libya, Egypt and Niger; the southern half of Tunisia; and the northern parts of Mali, Chad and Sudan.
Geography
The Sahara is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the west, the Red Sea on the east, the Mediterranean Sea on the north and the Sahel Savannah on the south. The enormous desert spans 11 countries: Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia.
The Sahara desert has a variety of land features, but is most famous for the sand dune fields that are often depicted in movies. The dunes can reach almost 600 feet (183 meters) high but they cover only about 15 percent of the entire desert. Other topographical features include mountains, plateaus, sand- and gravel-covered plains, salt flats, basins and depressions. Mount Koussi, an extinct volcano in Chad, is the highest point in the Sahara at 11,204 feet (3,415 m), and the Qattara Depression in Egypt is the Saraha’s deepest point, at 436 feet (133 m) below sea level.
Although water is scarce across the entire region, the Sahara contains two permanent rivers (the Nile and the Niger), at least 20 seasonal lakes and huge aquifers, which are the primary sources of water in the more than 90 major desert oases. Water management authorities once feared the aquifers in the Sahara would soon dry up due to overuse, but a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in 2013, discovered that the “fossil” (nonrenewable) aquifers were still being fed via rain and runoff.
How hot does it get?
The Sahara Desert is one of the most consistently hottest places on Earth. The average temperature during the summer months is between 100.4 °F (38 °C) and 114.8 °F (46 °C). In some areas the temperature can exceed 120 °F for several days in a row. The overall climate of the Sahara makes it a difficult place for any life to exist. It is hot, dry, and windy. Even though it is so hot during the day, the temperature can drop rapidly at night. Sometimes to below freezing. It rarely rains in the Sahara. Some regions can go years without seeing a drop of rain.
Landforms of the Sahara Desert
The Sahara Desert is made up of several different types of landforms including:
Dunes – Dunes are hills made of sand. Some dunes in the Sahara can reach over 500 feet tall.
Ergs – Ergs are large areas of sand. They are sometimes called sand seas.
Regs – regs are flat plains that are covered with sand and hard gravel.
Hamadas – Hamadas are hard and barren rocky plateaus.
Salt Flats – A flat area of land covered with sand, gravel, and salt.
Water
The Sahara has only two permanent rivers and a handful of lakes, but it has substantial underground reservoirs, or aquifers.
Its permanent rivers are the Nile and the Niger. The Nile rises in central Africa, south of the Sahara, and flows northward through Sudan and Egypt and empties into the Mediterranean. The Niger rises in western Africa, southwest of the Sahara, and flows northeastward into Mali and the desert then turns southeastward, through Nigeria, and empties into the Gulf of Guinea.
The Sahara has some 20 or more lakes, but only one with potable water–the expansive but shallow Lake Chad, a continually expanding and shrinking body of water that lies in the country of Chad, at the southernmost edge of the Sahara. Other lakes hold a briny stew of undrinkable water.
The Sahara’s aquifers often lie just below the surface of intermittent drainages, called “wadis,” which rise in mountain ranges and empty onto the desert floor. The aquifers sometimes discharge some of their waters to the surface at locations called “oases,” which are normally found in the lower points of surface depressions.
Physiography
The principal topographical features of the Sahara include shallow, seasonally inundated basins (chotts and dayas) and large oasis depressions; extensive gravel-covered plains (serirs or regs); rock-strewn plateaus (hammadas); abrupt mountains; and sand sheets, dunes, and sand seas (ergs). moreover the highest point in the desert is the 11,204-foot (3,415-metre) summit of Mount Koussi in the Tibesti Mountains in Chad. The lowest, 436 feet (133 metres) below sea level, is in the Qattara Depression of Egypt.
Physiography
What Can Be Found In The Sahara Desert?
The Sahara is much more than just sand – in fact, the majority of the Sahara is made up of barren, rocky plateaus, as well as salt flats, sand dunes, mountains and dry valleys. The rivers and streams found in the Sahara are all seasonal, apart from the River Nile.
There are over 20 lakes in the Sahara, most of which are saltwater lakes. moreover lake Chad is the only freshwater lake in the desert.
The highest peak in the Sahara is Emi Koussi (3,415m), a volcano located in Tibesti Mountains, Chad. Other mountain ranges in the area include the Aïr Mountains, Saharan Atlas, Adrar des Iforas, Hoggar Mountains, Tibesti Mountains, and the Red Sea hills.
How big are the sand dunes in the Sahara?
In east-central Algeria lies the Isaouane-n-Tifernine Sand Sea, with sand dunes as high as 450m – some of the tallest in the world!
The largest dunes in Morocco are the Erg Chigaga – with some dunes reaching a massive 300m. The Chigaga dunes are hard to reach, with access only permitted by 4×4, camel or foot.
Climate
According to the Köppen climate classification, the vast Sahara Desert experiences a hot desert climate. The sky above the desert region usually remains quite clear and therefore the permanent absence of clouds allows for the
unhindered high duration of sunshine over the entire desert area. The high sunshine exposure together with the lack of vegetation and extremely low precipitation makes the Sahara Desert one of the world’s hottest regions. During the hottest months, the average high temperature ranges between 38° to 40°C.
As a result the highest temperature in the Sahara Desert was recorded to be around 58°C in Aziziyah, Libya. The nighttime temperature ranges between 13° to 20°C. During winter, temperatures drop below the freezing point at nighttime. The Sahara Desert receives extremely low precipitation with the rainfall being very unreliable and extremely erratic. The annual evaporation rates are relatively much higher ranging from 2,500mm to over 6,000mm in the entire Sahara Desert region.
Contemporary peoples
Some two million people live in the Sahara,
living either a nomadic or settled life wherever they can find food and water. Most of them are in Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco, and Algeria. Dominant ethnicities in the Sahara are various Berber groups including Tuareg tribes,
various Arabized Berber groups such as the Hassaniya-speaking Moors (also known as Sahrawis),
and various “black African” ethnicities including Tubu, Nubians, Zaghawa, Kanuri, Peul (Fulani), Hausa, and Songhai.
The largest city in the Sahara is the Egyptian capital Cairo, in the Nile Valley. Other important cities are Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania; Tamanrasset, Ouargla, Bechar, Hassi Messaoud, Ghardaia, El Oued, Algeria; Timbuktu, Mali; Agadez, Niger; Ghat, Libya; and Faya, Chad.
